Every summer goes by quickly, I guess that is just part of getting older. When I was a child I remember feeling like the summer days with no school friends to play with would drag on forever, and then every school year seemed to last an eternity while I waited to make it to the next class up.

It is one of the cruel realities of this world that it takes so long for a person to realize that time should be savored and not wished away. This summer feels like a new reality for my little family. Leila and Thea are still little of course, but their brand of little no longer requires nap times, or even a reasonable bedtime on special occasions. We can take them to a wedding and let them cut loose until *we* are the ones that need to go home and get to bed. We can take them on an all day boating adventure and watch them swim around independently while we get to enjoy the water at our own pace.

It is certainly a stage to be relished, and I am trying to do that, but part of me is having a hard time letting go of the times of chubby baby bodies in swim diapers, and boat naps taken on my lap…and I can’t think of a better reason to miss the fireworks then to need to have the baby in bed before dark.

Rants from Mommyland is a blog that I really enjoy, and while I was away enjoying vacation with my big girls they published a post that both hit home to me, and made me really question how I feel about this phase…the sweetspot.

My first reaction was to say, “No, say it isn’t so! I can’t be there yet. ” Sure, some things are getting easier, some things are sweeter, but just like a high school homecoming queen claiming their years at BFE high school as the best years of her life, I wanted to spit with laughter at the idea that this was *the* spot to be in. Maybe for you. But I refuse to move on to the next step and leave behind all of the wonderfulness of babyhood that made that spot so sweet.

Last week I took my daughters into a store called Justice. A store that only sells items that include at least one of the following: sequins, fluorescents, rhinestones or animal prints. In this store my girls demanded to pick out their own flair. There really wasn’t anything sweet about that.

Raising my girls has been full of sweet and sour…sometimes nearly too much of either to handle. Every bad day is outweighed by the days when they show me how beautiful and smart they are growing up to be. It’s always a balance, no matter the age, stage or time of year. As our summer is starting to come to a close, and my baby girl moves on to her last year of pre- school, and Leila heads off to second grade I am doing my best to savor the good, and use the bad to remind me of all of the savory moments I have to fall back on, like the memory of Leila maneuvering around the stumps of Truman lake in a kayak all by herself. And of sweet Thea as she sits on the floor meticulously putting together a puzzle, taking it a part, putting it away and getting out a new one, one that is “really really realllllyyyy hard!”

"We are not put on this earth for ourselves, but are placed here for each other. If you are always there for others, then in time of need, someone will be there for you.
-- Jeff Warner

"What I want to say to you is that sometimes life catches you by surprise and you feel unequipped to handle what it brings you, but every bit of life you've lived before that moment equips you to live through it. That's what I would give to you."
-Fanni Victoria Green-Lemons (talking to her daughter)

If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can, there is nothing more to it than that.

"The most important thing she'd learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one."
-Jill Churchhill